


Even as I Wander

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Grown-ass Idiots Falling in Love, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 23:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18648208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Peter B. Parker falls back through space and time and lands on top of someone he didn’t expect to see.





	Even as I Wander

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I have a lot of Thoughts about what Peter B. Parker ought to do after he gets back his own universe and most of them involve Johnny Storm.
> 
> This was just a little exercise to see if I could write these two nerds in a way that felt natural. I hope I succeeded!
> 
> Title is from REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” because I’m secretly Old.
> 
> Not beta’ed. Enjoy anyway!

Catapulting home through a sci-fi circus portal is a less harrowing experience than initially getting dragged away through one had been, but only by a very small margin.

Peter assumes his uncharacteristic chill has something to do with the way he’s still coasting on the gleeful swell of pride he’d felt when Miles kicked his legs out from underneath him, the feeling amplified by the swirling lights and impossible shapes refracting around him. He’s not sure what it is about this nowhere space that seems to magnify sensory input, but he’s also hyper-aware of the low grade ache that’s been pulsing through his body since he got sucked out of his original dimension in the first place.

The sensation doesn’t ever crest the way it had started to at alarmingly narrower intervals back in Miles’s universe, but Peter can feel the raw drag of it pulling like the edges of a particularly nasty wound. For once in his sorry life his good luck holds, and before any of his remaining cells can rapidly degenerate the psychedelic carnival vortex spits him out 12 feet above the mattress he had delivered a few months back, during the week he spent in a fugue state after signing his divorce papers.

He has half a second to bask in the relieved anticipation of a soft landing until there’s a tiny, electric fizz of spider-sense across the surface of his skin and he collides with something that is: a) okay, soft, sure, but with a couple of unexpected protrusions that dig brutally into Peter’s more tender places, b) smells really good in a way Peter thinks he ought to recognize, and c) comes instantly alive with a startled yelp and a blazing flare of heat.

 _Johnny,_ Peter realizes, even as he ricochets away into the corner, reeking of singed hair and curled protectively around his suddenly throbbing kidneys. _Of course._

“Jesus Christ,” Johnny’s familiar tenor hisses, while Peter screws his eyes shut against the supernova glare he’s giving off. “Pete?”

The heat disperses, sudden and unsettling, and the pink glow behind Peter’s eyelids floods dark.

“Fuck,” Johnny murmurs, from significantly closer at hand.

Staggeringly warm fingers fan gently over Peter’s shoulders, coaxing him carefully out of his best pillbug impression and into a rigid half-sprawl. Those same fingers find the seam of his mask with practiced ease and tug it up and away, just impatient enough for it sting when the fabric catches on his nose.

“Ow,” Peter groans, squinting through the shadows at the bleary smudge of Johnny’s face looming hopefully above him. The bleached tufts of his coarse curls are very pale in the blue-tinged darkness, rising over his head in a ghostly, ruffled halo.

Thus assured of his accidental assaulter’s identity, Peter lets himself flop back against the floor like a much-abused ragdoll. He’s never pretended at a surfeit of pride. Johnny scoots in so close that his knees are jammed uncomfortably against Peter’s side and reaches down to brush his mask-mussed hair up off his forehead with a broad sweep of his palm.

“Oh my God, _Pete_ ,” he breathes, soft and disbelieving.

His voice sounds uncharacteristically wobbly so Peter reaches up without thinking to curl his far hand reassuringly around Johnny’s wrist.

Johnny’s gaze roves searchingly over the topography of Peter’s face, the rich, mossy hazel of his eyes gone bright under what Peter selfishly hopes doesn’t turn out to be a sheen of unshed tears. He’s never been great with unbridled demonstrations of emotion, and for all his (highly questionable) acting skills, Johnny is a committed and pathetically hideous crier when he gets sincerely worked up about something.

“Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated,” Peter offers. It comes out a little thinner and wheezier than he’d prefer but he’ll allow it.

“I can see that, bug-boy,” Johnny agrees thickly. He huffs a laugh that gets stuck in his throat for a second, takes a slow, shaky breath, and then bows forward like he’s melting, pressing his face against Peter’s shoulder and heaving a long, relieved sigh into the fabric of his suit.

“Where the hell’ve you been, Parker?” he asks, voice muffled and vaguely miffed. Before Peter can respond he adds knowingly, _“Don’t_ say Aruba.”

Peter, the word already forming in the back of his throat, obediently snaps his mouth shut. He brings his free hand up to cup the curve of Johnny’s head, gloved thumb dragging comfortingly over the buzzed hair at Johnny’s neckline. Johnny shivers and tries his best to press even further into Peter’s already very thoroughly invaded personal space.

“Long story,” Peter sighs, feeling suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted. Johnny laughs again, a brief gust of damp heat against the exposed skin of Peter’s throat. It smells vaguely of cinnamon, the toothpaste that Johnny prefers.

“It always is with you,” Johnny murmurs, shaking his head in fond exasperation. Peter absently clenches his jaw at the sweet, slight tickle of Johnny’s curls against his chin. He shifts, trying to get a little more comfortable here on the floor of his cramped and dated Brooklyn bachelor pad with half a superhero splayed out in top of him.

A spike of pain darts through his abdomen and Peter winces, trying to discreetly wiggle out from under some of Johnny’s not inconsiderable weight. He has broad shoulders, if you’re into that sort of thing, and a markedly fuller figure now that he’s pushing forty than he did when they met back in their teens, weedy little idiots the both of them. It suits him, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a treat to lie underneath him while Peter’s healing factor is still working in overdrive to repair damage caused by Fisk, and Doc “call-me-Liv” Ock, and now even Johnny himself.

“I think you ruptured my spleen.”

“Forget your spleen,” Johnny says ominously, lifting his head, brow furrowed and serious. “I almost fried you.”

He brings his fingers up to press gingerly at Peter’s cheek and Peter flinches, shying away from the sudden sting. The skin pulls a little when he grimaces, too tight like it gets after a bad sunburn. He tilts his head back just enough to see the pitiful scrap of his mask where it’s puddled on the floor, a narrow, char-edged hole melted asymmetrically through the left-hand side.

“Huh,” he says, and then looks back down to Johnny. “What are you doing in here anyway, flamebrain?”

Johnny stares at him.

“You were missing,” he says. “For a _week.”_

“So you started squatting?” Peter gives Johnny’s neck a final, fond squeeze and then relinquishes his grip, pushing gingerly up onto his elbows. “I oughta charge you rent.”

“Pete,” Johnny intones very seriously, shifting back just far enough that Peter can sit up, “I will pay for an entire year in this shithole if it means you don’t pull another disappearing act before the lease is up.”

“I told you, not my fault.” Peter grits his teeth against the hot stab in his ribs as he struggles to his feet. He lets Johnny take his elbow and guide him up, shrugging it off with his usual bad grace as soon as he’s upright. “There was this whole vortex thing, and I got sucked into this other dimension where I was blonde and handsome and young and still married to M.J.”

Johnny blinks, a strange, hunted look on his face that Peter can’t quite identify in the dark. “What?”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees with a shrug, because, frankly, he’s probably feeling just as baffled and confused as Johnny is about this whole mess. “He was just kind of, _better._ Overall. Except that he’d recently been murdered.” He points at Johnny. “Being alive gave me the definite edge there.”

“Blonde?” Johnny asks, wrinkling his nose in distaste and glancing at Peter’s unruly brunette bottlebrush. He’s halfway to a grimace worthy of a primetime telenovela when he balks and yelps, “Wait, _murdered?_  Who - I - are you - ”

He darts forward, hands a worried frenzy, fussing over every part of Peter he can reach until Peter manages to catch him gently by the wrists and hold him still. His pulse is fast under Peter’s thumbs.

“Wilson Fisk,” Peter supplies, dragging his fingers soothingly across Johnny’s wrists. “And he didn’t murder _me,_ he murdered the other Peter. Before I got there, obviously, or I would have put a stop to it.”

“Other Peter? You mean the blonde guy?”

“I know you know how alternate dimensions work, hothead,” Peter chides, but he can’t quite keep his mouth from curling.

“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny sighs. He flashes Peter a small, conspiratorial smirk, though he still looks vaguely frazzled. “Forgive me for trying to defuse the tension.”

“I think we need to revisit your conflict resolution techniques, Torch.”

“Whatever,” Johnny sighs, and lets his arms drop back to his sides. Peter lets him go and tries not to think about the heat of Johnny’s skin against his palms. “You think it’s funny when I’m dumb.”

Peter tilts his hand back and forth in the air.

“It’s more of ‘laugh so I don’t start eternally crying’ thing.”

Johnny rolls his eyes and makes a vague gesture that’s clearly meant to encompass Peter’s entire person.

“How about instead of laughing _or_ crying, you change out of that totally destroyed suit and get some sleep?” He flops down on the mattress, torso pushed up on one elbow, and wrinkles his nose, arching a highly judgmental eyebrow. “It reeks like mad science and AXE body spray.”

Peter discreetly lifts an arm and gives himself a cursory sniff, immediately recoiling as he chokes his way through a cough.

“Oh, God,” he rasps.

Johnny, lying back on the mattress with his arms folded underneath his head and his eyes now closed, says smugly, “Told you.”

“Jonathan Storm, right for once,” Peter agrees, crossing to the cheap particleboard dresser shoved haphazardly into the corner. Top-of-the-line furniture clearly had not been his top priority as a newly divorced, middle-aged bachelor. He tugs a drawer open and asks over his shoulder, “Are you _sure_ I landed in the right universe?”

“You’re still not funny, so I think you’re good,” Johnny supplies, after a moment’s thoughtful consideration.

Peter snorts and paws through his clothes until he unearths an old tee from his days in the Empire State Chemistry Club and a pair of clean boxer-briefs. He drags himself to the bathroom while Johnny, presumably, continues to osmote with Peter’s mattress, pulling the door mostly-shut behind him and wincing as he struggles through peeling the top half of his costume off.

He hisses at the cascade of aches and stabbing pains rippling through his abdomen and glances down at himself, mottled blue-black-red from his collarbones to his hips. A quick peek at the mirror confirms that his hair is a mess, the upper left half of his face is tinged pink where Johnny’s flames got a little close for comfort, and he’s nursing a fairly spectacular black eye - all pretty standard for the aftermath of a world-shattering supervillain fight.

It’s something of a cold comfort to know that he’ll feel better in the morning, because dressing himself _now_ is the more pressing issue. He’s got his arms in the sleeves of his shirt and is bracing himself to lift the thing up over his head when the door swings open behind him and Johnny leans against the jamb with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Need a hand, web-head?”

“I feel like I should protest on behalf of my maidenly virtue,” Peter complains. Johnny snorts and shakes his head, stepping into the cramped space.

“Jesus, Pete,” he sighs, gaze wandering over Peter’s thoroughly Pollacked frame. He reaches out and grazes the fingers of one hand over an especially nasty bruise along Peter’s side. Peter hisses a breath through his teeth and tries not to curl in protectively over his ribs.

“This isn’t really an interactive exhibit,” he warns mildly, flashing Johnny a shallow smirk to cut a little of the sting.

Johnny pulls his hand away and sighs again.

“Alright, spider-jerk, let’s get this over with.”

“Excellent bedside manner,” Peter drawls, even as Johnny tugs the shirt carefully up his arms and over his head. “Really preserves my dignity in this mortifying time of physical infirmity.”

“You lost your dignity to the Hudson twenty years ago,” Johnny assures, smoothing his hands over Peter’s shoulders so that his shirt settles evenly and then reaching up to make a half-hearted attempt at taming his hair.

Peter allows him thirty seconds of wasted effort and then gently swats his hands away.

“Alright, enough,” he says. “It’s never gonna happen.”

Johnny purses his mouth in something he would probably insist isn’t a pout and mutters, “I don’t know how your hair is harder to work with than mine.”

“I always figured it was a combination of stubbornness and self-loathing at a genetic level,” Peter replies, stepping around Johnny and fishing his toothbrush out of the tellingly dusty ceramic cup on the lip of the sink. “Or it could be a side-effect of the spider venom. Science may never know for sure.” He squeezes Johnny’s shoulder as he passes, thoughtless and affectionate. “I’ll be done in a minute, just need to get the taste of interdimensional travel out of my mouth.”

“You want help with these?” Johnny tucks a finger shallowly over the waistband of Peter’s suit bottoms, warm against the slope of his hip. If Peter wasn’t beat halfway to hell he’d undoubtedly be pulling the waistband back in preparation for an utterly punishing snap. As it is, he just draws his knuckle in a quick, hot sweep across Peter’s skin.

Peter doesn’t shiver, but it’s a close thing.

“What is this, a strip joint?” he asks, ducking his head to scoop a few handfuls of quality New York tap water into his suddenly dry mouth.

“Only if you’re up to pole dancing.” Johnny’s grin is a bright chip of white in the periphery of Peter’s vision. He pulls his hand away and steps back, starting to fade into the darkness of Peter’s miserable, poorly furnished loft while Peter loads his toothbrush up with blue-flecked paste. “Seriously, though, you good?”

Peter nods solemnly, toothbrush jammed unattractively into the pocket of his cheek, and meets Johnny’s eye in the mirror.

“Good as I’m gonna get,” he assures, vaguely garbled around a mouthful of foamy mint. He spits in the general direction of the drain and adds, more clearly, “Stoked that the routine I learned in strip aerobics apparently won’t be going to waste, though.”

“It’s 2019, nobody says stoked anymore,” Johnny snorts derisively and slinks off into the shadows.

Peter rinses his mouth and manages to carefully shimmy his way out of his filthy suit bottoms and into his clean underwear with a minimum of bitten-off curses and choked-back whimpers. He toes the pieces of his costume absently into the corner and staggers back out into the main room, switching the light off as he goes.

It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness but he starts shuffling in the general direction of the mattress anyway. It’s not like there’s far to go - palatial condos are difficult to come by on a divorcée’s salary, and two decades and change in a spandex spider costume haven’t left Peter with an especially impressive nest egg.

His spider sense prickles as his toes skim the mattress and Peter levers himself down onto it with a long, low sigh. Johnny makes a muted grunting noise beside him and shuffles for a second before a soft, familiar warmth is settling welcomingly around Peter’s shoulders. It’s his old duvet, Peter realizes, unearthed from somewhere in this mausoleum of hastily-packed moving boxes.

“You want the pillow?” Peter asks, squirming his way into a more comfortable position.

“Nah,” Johnny provides, absent and loose. “You’re the one who got all mangled by spacetime.”

“That’s not exactly - ” Peter starts. Johnny makes a noise in the back of his throat and raises a hand only to let it flop directly onto Peter’s face.

Peter squints at him past his fingers through the dark.

He and Johnny have been stuck in enough shared sleeping arrangements over the years that it doesn’t register as strange anymore. It’s surprisingly easy to fall asleep next to Johnny, even though Peter knows from experience that he’ll wake up in a few hours soaked through with sweat because sleeping with Johnny is basically the same thing as inviting a pile of live kindling into bed with you.

He wonders vaguely if he ought to be weirded out to find Johnny here, inhabiting his space and standing vigil like some kind of abandoned Victorian war bride, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. Glad as he was to stick a fork in Fisk’s plan and secure passage back to his own universe, he would be lying if he said he’d been looking forward to a long night recuperating alone.

Johnny snuffles beside him and Peter studies him curiously. He isn’t wearing a shirt - no great surprise, there - and has his other arm tucked up under his head. He appears to have rolled up the thin, flannel blanket Peter had been using as a comforter and repurposed it into a makeshift pillow in a surprising twist of creative problem solving. His face isn’t quite slack enough for sleep, but it’s headed there, mouth soft and half-open while his chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm.

Peter doesn’t get a lot of time to just _look_ at Johnny, and it’s a little odd to see him so still even though he knows Johnny is probably just exhausted because he’s been running himself ragged searching for Peter. He feels a familiar wash of the same guilt that used to surface whenever he unwittingly left M.J. behind him, tied up in knots.

As if he can feel Peter thinking, Johnny cracks an eye and frowns over at him.

“What?”

“You sure you’re gonna be comfy like that?” Peter asks, voice muffled against the skin of Johnny’s palm, to spare himself the embarrassment of doing something stupid like thanking Johnny for being here or bursting into pitiful, relieved tears.

Johnny closes his eyes with an amused huff and tilts his face an inch or two in Peter’s direction.

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.” The dimpled edge of his smirk seems even deeper in the dark. “You can tell me about it in the morning.”

Peter chuckles and ducks his head away when Johnny tries to squeeze his face in retaliation.

“Sure thing, flamebrain,” he sighs, rolling onto his stomach and slinging an arm over Johnny’s waist.

He groans a little at the sudden soothing heat that blooms all along his aching side. Johnny snorts at this admittedly somewhat pathetic display, but he shifts even closer, knuckles brushing Peter’s temple.

“Go to sleep, web-head,” he murmurs, and somehow, blissfully, Peter does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
